Water from baths, showers and washing up can all be used, but not water from dishwashers and washing machines, if my memory serves me right from Gardeners' Question Time. Also use mulches and membranes to stop water loss by evaporation. There's some useful stuff and further reading here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/tv_and_radio/factsheets/pages/21.shtml

Arthur and Marionhaste,
Thanks for your comments, much appreciated- especially about the storage.
Sorry for the delay in getting back have been away fro a few days
Peter

I read recently that 95% of greywater schemes are abandoned within 5 years of installation, mostly due to problems with the water turning rancid during storage and sludge and grease blocking pipework. Rainwater collection is a different thing--far easier, as there's no need to treat the water collected. Greywater will turn unpleasant within 12 hours if it's not treated (usually with small amounts of chlorine bleach, I think), so these systems need a lot of monitoring to work well.

What ever you decide to do, don't mix rainwater and greywater--have separate systems for each, if you have to have both.

Try using a waterless loo . For info on grey water systems try www.rotaloo.co.uk

I've got a system riged up that works well, i've young children so we get through a lot of bath water, i've simply routed the bath out flow via a hose pipe and straight onto the garden, since its coming from higher up than the garden there's always plenty of preasure, when its not required the hose attachment can be disconected the water poor into the drain, as for the toilet, if it's yellow let it mellow, if its brown flush it down.

Peter,

I'd seriously think about refitting all of your household water appliances to low use types before you embark on any greywater recycling system. Low flow WCs, taps, showers, and water economic dishwashers/washing machines are the best first steps towards reduction. As far as greywater recycling goes I'd questions whether this is worthwhile. Others have mentioned the costs and difficulties involved and as your foul water is already treated by your municipal water works why install a system that is less efficient privately than rely on their operation? Get your money's worth from your council tax/water rates.

Urm, I think i will start with the rain water capturing system- the problem we had less than 100 mm last year, from February to February it didn't rain at all. I have a diviner scanning the land looking for alternative sources, with the idea of digging in one or two large unground tanks above the property to gravity feed the irrigation sysytem for the olives (Believe it or not they are thirsty fellows if you are growing them for fruit) and for the vegetable garden. I don't use washing machines or dish washers at the moment- with PV power supply they aren't really much of an option if you want a hot wash anyway.Luckily on the nappy front I have grown out of mine recently and don't plan on having any more around the house for some time.
thanks everyone
pete

I've run a little experiement over the last year since my water meter was fitted and have managed to use only 24 cm3 of water over the last 12 months (single person household with small/medium size garden).

All I do is to collect my bath and shower water in a large plastic bin in the bathroom and use it to flush the loo. I had a stop tap fitted to the water supply for the cistern that makes is easy to stop mains water being used.
Transfer from bin to cistern is currently 'manual' by using a small bucket. I have debated if this could be 'automated' to some extend, but see no easy way without using an electric pump or similar, so for now elbow grease is all that is used.

The water is used up pretty rapidly, so storage is not an issue (in the UK). If the water starts to smell I put it in the garden, disinfect the bin and start again. I have used very little fresh water this year for filling the loo, and most of that was used when I had visitors staying over.

This approach has reduced my total water cost from £40 per month on rates to less than £10 per month on the meter - including a 15p rise in the cost per cm3 over the year. I experiemented once with using water from the washing machine, but decided it was too dirty and there was too much to store, though I might decide to use some of it in the garden if need be in summer. Most of my washing up water also ends up in the garden.

The main issue with this approach is the space required for the waste water storage bin. Just for myself this approach work fine, but with several people in a household I suspect not all bathwater could be stored, but then you would also need more water to flush the toilet, so maybe with a staggered approach to spread showering and bathing over e.g. morning and evenings this could be addressed ;-)

Next on my list is to link my rainwater butt to the loo cistern. As the house is on a slope I think I should get enough pressure to fill the cistern via a hose pipe link and a lockable Y-adapter to the mains pipe. I'll keep youposted as I progress..

(PDobson)
I am interested in installing a water recycling system - The rainwater seems pretty straightforward but I was also going to arrange the plumbing such that shower and bath water could be diverted to the rainwater tank when it got down to say 20% capacity. We would be using the water for loos and garden water with a bypass for the loos to mains if the recycled water ran out. What are your thoughts - should I separate the two systems completely and just have a water butt for the grey water to allow watering of the garden daily so keeping storage to a minimum - or could you just keep a stock of chlorine tablets for use in the main tank if and when there was a problem?

Hm. I think I will plug the grey water feed directly into some sort of garden irrigation system so that in dry weather I can divert the water into that to be used immediately/within 24 hrs. The cross contamination issue with rain water into the mains should be taken care of by the rainwater harvesting system I intend putting in. This separate waste water system will at least allow me to keep watering the garden in dry spells without having to try and set up siphoning systems or using a watering can to empty the bath!

I think it was mentioned on the old forum but I'd be interested to know about anyone with any experience with manual pumps. It seems a shame to use electrical pumps and it would be quite fun to use a manual pump for watering the garden (e.g. from underground storage tank) or for quickly refilling a cistern after you flush from a ground level tank. It seems to be the sort of technology thats so hard to come by nowadays - I also remember looking and failing to find a manual food mixer/blender thing (I think there's an expensive bicycle powered juicer thing you can buy if you've got money to burn).

Hi - I'm curious about the back syphoning issue.

At the moment I'm relying on the anti-syphon arrangemnts of the existing cistern (the floppy tube), maintaining the air gap between inlets and highest water level, and making sure the overflow is set low enough to avoid the water in the cistern geting near the inlet valves.

Do i need to do more? - I can put double check valves in easily enough, but I'd rather not at the moment, would more experienced hands recomend it?